| Charlie and the Chocolate Factory | |
|---|---|
| Author | Roald Dahl |
| Illustrator | Joseph Schindelman (original) Quentin Blake (1998 editions onwards) |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Children's Fantasy novel |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (original) Penguin Books (current) |
| Publication date | 1964 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback, Paperback) |
| ISBN | 0-394-91011-7 |
| OCLC Number | 9318922 |
| Followed by | Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator |
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) is a children's book by British author Roald Dahl. The story features the adventures of young Charlie Bucket inside the chocolate factory of eccentric confectioner Willy Wonka.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was first published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in 1964, and in the United Kingdom by George Allen & Unwin in 1967. The book was adapted into two major motion pictures: Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory in 1971, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 2005. The book's sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, was written by Roald Dahl in 1972. Dahl had also planned to write a third book in the series, but never finished it.
The story was originally inspired by Roald Dahl's experience of chocolate companies during his schooldays. Cadbury would often send test packages to the schoolchildren in exchange for their opinions on the new products. At that time (around the 1920s) Cadbury and Rowntree's were England's two largest chocolate makers, and they each often tried to steal trade secrets by sending spies into the other's factory, posing as employees. Because of this, both companies became highly protective of their chocolate making processes. It was a combination of this secrecy and the elaborate, often gigantic, machines in the factory that inspired Dahl to write the story.[1]
Contents |
Charlie Bucket, a nice boy from a poor family, lives with his parents and both sets of elderly grandparents (Grandpa Joe, Grandma Josephine, Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina). From these four, especially Grandpa Joe, he hears stories about the candymaker Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory he built in Charlie's hometown. After rival chocolate makers Arthur Slugworth, Mr. Fickelgruber, and Mr. Prodnose sent in spies (posing as workers) in order to steal his recipes, Mr. Wonka had decided to send home his workers and close the factory. Years of silence passed until one day, when the factory mysteriously came back to life. The gates remain locked however; the factory has resumed operations with workers whose identity is a mystery. Nobody, including Wonka, is seen going in or out of the factory anymore.
One evening, the headline of Mr. Bucket's evening paper states that Wonka is holding a worldwide contest, in which five Golden Tickets are hidden under the wrappers of his candy bars; the prize for those who find them is a day-long tour of the factory and a lifetime supply of chocolate. The contest becomes a worldwide mania, with people resorting to increasingly desperate and unscrupulous measures to find the tickets, and anyone who succeeds becomes front-page headline news and a worldwide celebrity. The first four tickets are found by four bad children, the gluttonous Augustus Gloop, spoiled Veruca Salt, chewing gum-addicted Violet Beauregarde, and television-obsessed Mike Teavee.
Charlie also attempts to take part in the search; and after two failed attempts, during a cold icy spell, he finds a silver coin in a gutter, and uses it to buy two Wonka Bars. Opening the second bar, he finds the final ticket. Although a huge crowd bustles to look at the ticket, he is rescued by the shopkeeper, and runs home to tell his family. Together, the five lucky winners then await the big day.
Grandpa Joe accompanies Charlie, while each of the other four children are chaperoned by their parents. As the group moves from room to room, the tour turns into a punishment for the bad children as one child after another falls victim to his or her particular vices and is removed:
Charlie is the only child who does not misbehave throughout the factory tour. Seeing that he is the only one left, Wonka announces that he has "won." He receives the entire factory and will take over the company after Wonka retires. The reason Wonka had sent out the Golden Tickets was to find a child to be his heir, as he himself has no family to carry on his work. Wonka, Charlie and Grandpa Joe board a special glass elevator.
They see the four bad children leave the factory with permanent reminders of their misbehaviour as well as their lifetime supply of chocolate:
As they are propelled up from the factory, the book ends, but the story continues in the sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.
Although the book has always been popular, over the years a number of prominent individuals have spoken critically of the novel. Children's novelist and literary historian John Rowe Townsend has described the book as "fantasy of an almost literally nauseating kind" and accusing it of "astonishing insensitivity" regarding the original portrayal of the Oompa-Loompas as black pygmies,[2] although Dahl did revise this later (See below). Another novelist, Eleanor Cameron, compared the book to the candy that forms its subject matter, commenting that it is "delectable and soothing while we are undergoing the brief sensory pleasure it affords but leaves us poorly nourished with our taste dulled for better fare".[3] Ursula K. Le Guin voiced her support for this assessment in a letter to Cameron.[4] Defenders of the book have pointed out it was unusual for its time in being quite dark for a children's book, with the "antagonists" not being adults or monsters (as is the case even for most of Dahl's books) but the naughty children.
There are four main rooms that the tour goes through, losing one child at a time. They pass many other rooms but don't go in.
The Chocolate Room is the first room the group enters. It is said that everything in this room is edible: the pavements, the bushes, even the grass. There are trees made of taffy that grow jelly apples, bushes that sprout lollipops, mushrooms that spurt whipped cream, pumpkins filled with sugar cubes instead of seeds, jelly bean stalks, and spotty candy cubes. The main icon of the room is the Chocolate River, where the chocolate is mixed and churned by the waterfall, but must not be touched by human hands. Willy Wonka proclaims, "There is no other factory in the world that mixes its chocolate by waterfall." Pipes that hang on the ceiling come down and suck up the chocolate, then send it to other rooms of the factory, such as the Fudge Room as Augustus Gloop is sucked into that pipe after falling into the river while drinking from it. Wonka had an Oompa-Loompa take Mrs. Gloop to the Fudge Room to look for her son.
Also, there is a boat that is operated by Oompa-Loompas which takes the tour on a Chocolate River Ride.
The Inventing Room is the second room that the tour goes through. This room is home to Wonka's new—and still insufficiently tested—candies, such as Everlasting Gobstoppers, Hair Toffee, and Wonka's greatest idea so far, Three-Course Dinner Chewing Gum. This candy is a three course dinner all in itself, containing, "Tomato soup, roast beef and baked potato, and blueberry pie and ice cream". However, once the chewer gets to the dessert, the side effect is that they turn into a giant "blueberry." This happens to Violet Beauregarde after she rashly grabs and consumes the experimental gum. Violet is subsequently taken to the Juicing Room so that the juice can be removed from her immediately before the swelling causes her to explode. The tour then leaves the Inventing Room.
After an exhausting jog down a series of corridors, Wonka allows the party to rest briefly outside the Nut Room, though he forbids them to enter. This room is where Wonka uses trained squirrels to break open good walnuts for use in his sweets. All bad walnuts are thrown down in a garbage chute which leads to an incinerator that is lit every other day. Veruca Salt desperately wants a squirrel, but becomes furious when Wonka tells her she cannot have one. She tries to grab a squirrel for herself, but it rejects her as a "bad nut" and an army of squirrels haul her across the floor and throw her down the garbage chute. Wonka assures her father that she could be stuck on top of the garbage chute and they quickly enter the Nut Room. As Mr. Salt leans over the hole to look for Veruca, the squirrels rush up behind him and push him in.
In the 1971 film version, the nut sorting room is an egg room, with large geese laying golden chocolate eggs. The sorting mechanism is the same, but Veruca places herself on the mechanism while trying to get a goose.
However in the 2005 film version, it had followed the original storyline with Veruca wanting a squirrel and being rejected and thrown down a garbage chute to the incinerator that is lit every Tuesday. Lucky for Veruca and her father, Wonka is told by an Oompa-Loompa that the incinerator is broken allowing three weeks of rotten garbage to break their fall.
The Television Room is home to Wonka's latest invention, Television Chocolate, where they take a giant bar of Wonka chocolate and shrink it, then send it through the air in a million pieces to appear in a television. The bar can be taken from the screen, and even consumed. At Wonka's behest, Charlie takes the newly shrunk bar (Mike believes the bar is just an image on a screen). Mike Teavee is amazed at this new discovery, and attempts to send himself through television, resulting in him being shrunk down to be no more than an inch high. Wonka suggests that he be put through the Gum Stretcher, where he tests the stretchiness of gum. He also planned to give him vitamins, notably Vitamin Wonka. The Oompa Loompas escort the Teavee family to the Gum Stretcher.
In the 1971 and 2005 film versions, Mike Teavee is stretched by the Taffy Puller. In the 1971 version, Mike's mother accompanies him to the factory, while his father accompanies him in the 2005 film. In the latter film, the consequence of his restoration is shown, as he is ridiculously tall, but stretched impossibly thin like taffy.
Responding to criticisms from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Canadian children's author Eleanor Cameron, and others for the book's portrayal of the Oompa Loompas as dark skinned and skinny African pygmies who worked in the factory for cacao beans, Dahl changed some of the text, and Schindelman replaced some illustrations (the illustrations for the British version were also changed). That new version was released in 1973 in the US. In the revised version the Oompa Loompas are described as having funny long golden-brown hair and rosy-white skin. Their origins were also changed from Africa to fictional Loompaland. Other minor changes appeared in the new version, notably the replacement of pre-decimal with decimal money.
The original book was Charlie's Chocolate Boy and was about ten horrid children who won tickets to the weekly Wonka's Factory visit. Dahl completely re-wrote it when his nephew Nicholas said "Uncle Roald, I don't like it at all."
In 2005, a short chapter which had been removed during the editing of the book, entitled "Spotty Powder", was published. The chapter featured the elimination of Miranda Piker, a "teacher's pet" with a headmaster father. Wonka introduces the group to a new sweet that will make children temporarily appear sick so that they can miss school that day, which enrages Miranda and her father. They vow to stop the candy from being made, and storm into the secret room where it is made. Two screams are heard, and Wonka agrees with the distraught Mrs. Piker that they were surely ground into Spotty Powder, and were indeed needed all along for the recipe, as "We’ve got to use one or two schoolmasters occasionally or it wouldn’t work." He then reassures Mrs. Piker that he was joking. Mrs. Piker is escorted to the boiler room by the Oompa-Loompas, who sing a short song about how delicious Miranda's classmates will find her.[5]
The book was first made into a feature film as a musical titled Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, directed by Mel Stuart, produced by David L. Wolper and starring Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka, character actor Jack Albertson as Grandpa Joe and Peter Ostrum as Charlie Bucket. Released worldwide on 30 June 1971 and distributed by Paramount Pictures (Warner Bros. is the current owner), the film had an estimated budget of $3 million. The film grossed only $4 million and was considered a box-office disappointment. Like many films based on books, there were several notable differences in the film from the book. For example:
Another film version, titled Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and directed by Tim Burton, was released on 15 July 2005; this version starred Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka and Freddie Highmore as Charlie Bucket. The Brad Grey production was a hit, grossing about $470 million worldwide with an estimated budget of $150 million. It was distributed by Warner Bros. this time. The 1971 and 2005 films are consistent with the written work to varying degrees. The Burton film in particular greatly expanded Willy Wonka's personal backstory. Both films likewise heavily expanded the personalities of the four "bad" children and their parents from the limited description in the book. There were further differences in this film version from the book, including Mike Teavee's obsession with video games and the Internet as well as television (the book pre-dates home computers and video games) and provided an explanation of how he found his Golden Ticket; this was never explained in the book nor the 1971 film.
It has also been produced by Swedish Television as still drawings narrated by Ernst-Hugo Järegård.
Concurrently with the 2005 film, a line of candies was introduced in North America, Europe and Oceania that uses the book's characters and imagery for its marketing. Presently sold in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the candies are produced in the United States, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Brazil, by Nestlé.
In 1985, the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory video game was released for the ZX Spectrum by developers Soft Option Ltd and publisher Hill MacGibbon.
On 11 July 2005, the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory video game was released for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo DS, Wii, Game Boy Advance and Windows PC by developers Backbone and High Voltage Software and publisher 2K Games.
On 1 April 2006, the British theme park Alton Towers opened a family boat ride attraction themed around the story. The ride features a boat section where guests travel around the chocolate factory in bright pink boats on a chocolate river. In the final stage of the ride, guests will enter one of two glass elevators where they will join Willy Wonka as they travel the factory, eventually shooting up and out through the glass roof.
This book has adapted frequently for the stage, most often as plays or musicals for children. These are often titled "Willy Wonka" or "Willy Wonka Jr.". They almost always feature musical numbers by all the main characters (Wonka, Charlie, Grandpa Joe, Violet, etc.). Many of the songs are revised versions from the 1971 film. A new professional musical is currently under development and is expected to premiere in 2011 in London.[6]
The Estate of Roald Dahl also sanctioned an operatic adaptation of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory called The Golden Ticket. The Golden Ticket was written by American composer Peter Ash and British Librettist Donald Sturrock. The Golden Ticket has completely original music, and was commissioned by American Lyric Theater, Lawrence Edelson - Producing Artistic Director; and Felicity Dahl. The opera received its world premiere at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis on June 13, 2010, in a co-production with American Lyric Theater and Wexford Festival Opera.[7]
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